Most Americans haven't heard of him, but Eric Cantona is a huge international soccer star known throughout Europe and much of the world.
I don't think we can be entirely happy seeing such misery around us. Unless you live in a pod. But then there is a chance... there is something to do. Nowadays what does it mean to be on the streets? To demonstrate? You swindle yourself. Anyway, that's not the way any more.We don't pick up weapons to kill people to start the revolution. The revolution is really easy to do these days. What's the system? The system is built on the power of the banks. So it must be destroyed through the banks.
This means that the three million people with their placards on the streets, they go to the bank and they withdraw their money and the banks collapse. Three million, 10 million people, and the banks collapse and there is no real threat. A real revolution.
We must go to the bank. In this case there would be a real revolution. It's not complicated; instead of going on the streets and driving kilometres by car you simply go to the bank in your country and withdraw your money, and if there are a lot of people withdrawing their money the system collapses. No weapons, no blood, or anything like that.
It's not complicated and in this case they will listen to us in a different way.
This would be like a well-known retired American athlete - like Michael Jordan, Joe Montana or Willie Mays - calling for concerted political action.
Indeed, Cantona's call for action is starting to go viral. See this, this and this.
One American commentator suggests killing two birds with one stone, by withdrawing our money and then buying silver to stop market manipulation and show the too big to fail banks who is boss:
In truth I do not understand what that guy is saying about buying silver, really.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow. The bank run looks like a nice idea (assuming you still have some money in the bank) but it's something to do within a larger mass movement.
I am not enthusiast of demonstrations either (maybe because of my social phobia tendencies) but it's clear that, regardless of their direct political impact (which does exist and is more important than Cantona cares to admit) they also serve to create/reinforce class consciousness, specially when joined with strikes. Last French general strike actually demonstrated that the system can be brought to its knees with a week or so of general strike, that workers still have the power to collapse the economy, the real economy and not just accountancy.
IMO there's too much talk of money and too little talk of actual production, which is why things work and why we manage to survive in fact. Money is nothing but information on how goods can be distributed and production organized: it's not the real thing but the coding pulses that regulate it. Blockading refineries, roads and harbors is also a coding pulse, potentially a much stronger one.
So I have my doubts that this initiative will produce the desired effect, specially lacking enough social organization/class consciousness, which is still being rebuilt.
Well since the banks only are required to have a small reserve - it used to be 10% in the US - not sure what it is now - this will guarantee that banks will fail before all the money is drawn out. So while hurting the banks you are also hurting depositors - How much more the FDIC can actually pay out for insured depositors is anyone's guess.
ReplyDeleteSo by hurting the banks you hurt the vast majority of depositors. I think this is a very dangerous route to take.
I like Cantone's idea. Given the low reserve requirements, such an action could expose the insolvency of the major US banks in dramatic fashion. I'm not so sure about the silver idea, since commodity markets can be manipulated by the Wall Street bankers easily enough.
ReplyDeleteMy suggestion for the 1-2 punch, is that after we withdraw all our money from the banks, we make all our holiday purchases in cash and purchase only from locally-owned merchants in our communities. That would deny the bankers their usurious interest on our purchases, and deny the mega-retail corporations their profits while stimulating economic activity in our own community.
The banks collapse, and then what?
ReplyDeleteThe bankster target in the USA is the big four banks who are known mortgage racketeers: J.P Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citi Bank. We want to deleverage them fractionally.
ReplyDeleteRemember that the credit unions and local and regional banks are the good guys and you do not want to harm them, so if you have deposits at any of the bad big four banks; transfer your account to the good guy’s banks.
Squeeze the bad bankers like they squeeze the American Taxpayer.
The big four need to go bankrupt and put in receivership before we can move forward with the real economy.